Sony 'not contemplating' future console talk, says House

Sony isn't contemplating talking about "anything to do with future console iterations at this point", Sony Computer Entertainment president, Andrew House has said.Ahead of much PS4 speculation over the past week, House told CVG at Japan's December PS Vita launch that the electronics firm is "just entering into this great period for PS3".He said: "I don't think we're contemplating talking about anything to do with future console iterations at this point."But one thing I always point to is that, somewhat in contrast to our major competitors, we have, particularly with PS2, managed the length of the lifecycle and ensured its profitability for our publishing partners for a much longer lifecycle than has been true of the competition."I would say that's in part because of the global reach of Sony from a distribution, infrastructure and marketing standpoint. Because in many markets, we work alongside really long-standing, established operations in electronics, we're able to migrate out into rather more emerging markets much more easily and sustainably than is possible for some of our competitors."Pushed further on his thoughts on the next generation, the affable and well-spoken exec said that, in his view, there are still "significant barriers" for game streaming on HD consoles, and physical media is still "the easiest consumer experience"."There are clearly a lot of opportunities [in the future] with regard to business models around games, all of which we're interested in and are exploring," House said."Some of our group companies already have a stake in free-to-play models and so on. But in my view, for the very highest quality high-definition console gaming, I think there are still some significant barriers to streaming solutions."Whether it's in mobile or cloud-based services, there are opportunities there for more casual content and in our case potentially for legacy content, which we would definitely like to explore. But I think we are a way away from being able to deliver the full-on top-end experience like that."The scale of data involved and issues around latency do mean that, at least for now, the easiest consumer experience is from physical media. Although, having said that, we're starting to see some growth in the number or proportion of our consumers that want to access their content via download. But I think it's still pretty small."The Sony exec's comments arrive days after MCV's claims that both PS4 and Xbox 720 will be shown at this year's E3.Quizzed recently by CVG on the PlayStation 4, Sony's Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida laughed: "I don't know what you are talking about."